At Grimmauld Place
by hpleems
Summary: After a sleepless night, Harry gets up early and learns something rather surprising about Sirius and Remus. This is a standalone one-shot, but could also be considered a companion piece to my much longer wolfstar fic, Only Now.


Harry felt as though he'd be lying awake for hours, listening to Ron snore and waiting for morning to come. He didn't think he'd had a proper night of sleep all summer. When he wasn't having nightmares about the Triwizard Tournament he was worried. Worried about Voldemort, worried about his upcoming hearing at the Ministry of Magic. Worried about the Order of the Phoenix. And increasingly, he was worried about returning to Hogwarts for his fifth year and leaving his godfather, Sirius, at Grimmauld Place. Sirius seemed different lately. Secretive, maybe, and he didn't really seem interested in doing much besides talking to Lupin. Harry wondered if his godfather was nervous about the war, or about Harry going back to school and leaving him here alone.

Harry swung his legs over the edge of the bed and tiptoed carefully downstairs. There wasn't any use in staying in bed anymore, and if he was lucky, maybe he'd be able to get a couple hours of sleep on the sofa in the living room before Mrs. Weasley woke him for breakfast.

The house was dark and quiet, and he fully expected to have the living room to himself. But his jaw dropped when he finally fumbled for the lamp and found that he was not alone at all.

Somebody else had beaten him to the couch. _Two_ somebodies, in fact. Remus Lupin was fast asleep, stretched out on top of—

" _Sirius_?" Harry stared at his godfather in surprise. Sirius was laying in a tangled heap on the couch with Lupin, blinking up at Harry in the sudden light.

"Harry?"

"S—sorry," Harry whispered. He was unsure what, exactly, he was seeing, but was embarrassed just the same. "What are you—I mean—I, er, couldn't sleep. I didn't know you were here."

Sirius didn't answer. He looked down at Lupin as if suddenly remembering where he was and back up at Harry, his face slightly flushed.

"Shit," he muttered. "Listen, don't worry about it, Harry," He shifted slightly under the weight of the still-sleeping Lupin, whose head was resting on his chest. "Moony got back late from a mission and he's, er, knackered—must have fallen asleep..."

Harry didn't say anything. He wondered if Sirius was often in the habit of waiting up for Professor Lupin. Harry hadn't even known that Lupin was due to return that night. He was mortified to have caught them like this, and yet he couldn't tear his eyes away from the sight of Professor Lupin sleeping so comfortably on his godfather, almost as though it were not an unusual occurrence. He knew the two men were close friends, but he, Harry, had certainly never slept on Ron like that. In fact, this was much more similar to day dreams he'd had about Cho Chang...

He opened his mouth, meaning to ask what Lupin's mission had been—Sirius was the only one who seemed willing to tell him anything about the Order these days, after all—but then he noticed that Sirius's hand was resting on Lupin's back, _under his shirt_ , and he blurted out something else entirely.

"Sirius, is something going on between you and Professor Lupin?"

Sirius inhaled sharply, his ears reddening. "What—er—I mean—Harry—"

"I think the answer you're looking for is _yes_ ," Lupin muttered dryly, his eyes still closed. Harry and Sirius both jumped at the sound of his voice. "I seem to remember James asking us a very similar question once. Harry at least was a bit more polite."

Sirius looked down at him in surprise. "Excuse me, Moony. _You're_ supposed to be the secretive, cautious one. Not me."

Harry stared at them both, not really sure what to say. This was all terribly surprising, and yet, somehow, it made perfect sense.

Lupin shrugged. "There's not much point in denying it now, is there?" He winced as he lifted his head off Sirius's chest. "Merlin, never let me sleep on this couch again. Hello, Harry."

"Er, hello, Professor," Harry said, blushing. "Sorry to wake you."

"It's quite all right," Lupin said, sitting up. He was bleary-eyed, but somehow looked more relaxed and content than Harry had ever seen him. He turned to Sirius. "Sirius, this isn't the seventies, and we're not seventeen anymore. We don't have to pretend that there's nothing going on between us. Not with Harry, at least."

Sirius glanced rather nervously at Harry, who gave him what he hoped was a reassuring smile. But he was still trying to process what Lupin had just said.

"You've been together since you were _seventeen_?" he said in amazement, looking from one to the other.

Sirius snorted. "Well, aside from that bit of time when I was in Azkaban and Moony thought I was a murderer. And those last two years that I was on the run..."

"Don't be a git, Sirius," Lupin muttered, jabbing him in the side. "We started dating at Hogwarts, Harry. We, er, lived together during the first war."

Harry gaped at them. "Really? Does everyone know?" He remembered something Lupin had said earlier. "Did my _dad_ know?"

Remus and Sirius looked at each other and laughed. "As if we could keep a goddamn thing from James," Sirius said, shaking his head. "Nosy git." Harry grinned, suddenly feeling as though the tension in the room had lifted. Lupin smiled at him.

"Really, it was your mother who was the real problem, Harry. She caught us holding hands in Hogsmeade on our first date—a secret date—but she didn't tell anyone, not even James."

Harry stared at them incredulously, trying to picture the pair of them at seventeen years old, in Hogsmeade, holding hands on a _date_. "Who asked who?" he asked eagerly, and Lupin laughed.

"That was almost twenty years ago," he said, shaking his head. "But I'm quite certain that it was Sirius who asked me."

"It was absolutely me," Sirius agreed, looking fondly at Lupin. "Meanwhile, Moony was terrified that someone would find out."

"Yes, well, we didn't know what the others would say back then," Lupin said matter-of-factly. "We hid it from James for a while longer—"

"—till he and Peter walked in on us in the dorm that time," Sirius finished. "And they were not nearly so polite as you, Harry, though they walked in on something rather worse." He made a face. "Ah, to be a teenage idiot again," he said, shaking his head. "No offense, Harry."

Harry snorted. It was something else, watching Sirius and Lupin flirt as if they really were a pair of lovesick teenagers. He'd never seen either of them look so happy. He wondered how he hadn't noticed this...this _thing_ between them before. "All right, then. And the rest of the Order? Do they know?"

"Probably not. It's taken us some time to, er, reacquaint this time around." Lupin glanced at Sirius. "But back then, Dumbledore certainly knew. And Minerva-"

"Really? Minnie knew?" Sirius asked with interest, and Remus rolled his eyes.

"Of course she did. We tried to keep it a secret, but we weren't always very careful. She probably knew a lot more about what we were up to back then than she let on."

"Probably," Sirius agreed cheerfully. "But whatever you do, Harry, don't tell Tonks. She's got a crush on old Moony here and might not take it well," Sirius said offhandedly, and Lupin smacked him with a throw pillow.

Harry laughed. "Really?" He tried to picture Tonks and Lupin together and was surprised to find that he liked the idea, though he was quite sure that he preferred Lupin with Sirius.

"No, she does not have a _crush_ on me," said Lupin, sounding irritated. "Like I said, we aren't seventeen anymore, Sirius, though _some_ of us might act like it."

Sirius winked at Harry. "Whatever you say, Moony."

Harry grinned. "Don't worry, my lips are sealed."

"Sorry we didn't tell you, Harry," Sirius said apologetically. "It's, ah, taken us rather a while to figure it out for ourselves these last months. "

"It's fine," Harry said quickly. "I understand. And it's none of my business, really. But I—I'm happy for you," he added, and he meant it. "You might want to go up to bed, though. Mrs. Weasley will be up soon. Unless you want her to catch you, too."

Sirius grimaced, but Lupin laughed as they got to their feet. "Molly would be thrilled. She'd probably throw us a celebratory brunch."

Sirius gave Harry's shoulder an affectionate squeeze as he and Lupin left the room. "See you at breakfast, Harry."

When they were gone, Harry flopped down into an armchair, exhausted. He'd been quite surprised at first, but the two of them being together actually explained quite a lot. All those times he'd entered a room to find the pair of them in close, quiet conversation, and the way that Lupin seemed to anticipate everything Sirius was going to say before he said it. And then there was Sirius, always knowing exactly how long it was until the next full moon, without even having to check. Sirius's life had always seemed to hold very little happiness. But there was a time, Harry now knew, when all of them must at least have been content. Remus and Sirius, as well as Lily and James.

And as Harry drifted off to sleep, he suddenly felt a bit better about going back to Hogwarts at the end of summer break. There were still more than enough things to keep him awake at night, but now, at least, he could be sure that Sirius wouldn't be alone at Grimmauld Place.


End file.
